News Plants

A nearly century-old dead date palm tree helped solve an ancestry mystery

The iconic Cape Verde date palm comes from cultivated trees gone feral

A group of date plam trees is silhouetted against a blue sky.

New data for a long-running debate on the origins of Cape Verde’s treasured date palms raise questions about tweaking their scientific name.

William J. Baker/Plants, People, Planet 2025

By Susan Milius

What the island nation of Cape Verde cherishes as its own distinctive kind of date palm is getting an ancestry reveal.

The Cape Verde date palm (Phoenix atlantica), native to the island nation it’s nicknamed for, is one of three trees there that don’t grow in the wild anywhere else.